To Test or Not to Test?

This paper will examine the question of standards testing in public schools. What is its purpose? Are standards tests an effective and acceptable tool for measuring public school performance? Should we keep them or discard them?
Published on January 1, 2000

The issue of standards testing in Manitoba’s public schools has a complicated recent history. After years with no tests, the Department of Education had started to use them again in a limited way. But, they have become a contentious political issue and the Department is now beginning to retreat from its policy.

For the most part, standards provincial testing as a key component of evaluation in Manitoba’s public schools disappeared more than 30 years ago. Only a remnant of the former regime remained; in the early part of the 1990’s, Grade 12 students wrote province-wide exams in only one subject per year, and the marks they obtained counted for only 30% of their final grade .

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